Mesh T Shirt Texturing Tutorial

Because a friend needed some help i promised i would write a simple tutorial on how to do a mesh tshirt. This is not the only way and im certain more experienced creators have their own ways they prefer,but this is what works for me and how i learned all on my on.

First things first search the marketplace for Full Perm Mesh Shirt. Be more specific either for men or womens or the style of shirt you are needing.

In your folder you will see premade shirts and textures. You need to open the texture and save it to your computer.( It may say shadowmap)

Now open up photoshop and then File and Open  and locate the shirt.

 

Now you can see this one has no texture on it at all. If yours looks similar to this you will need a simple shirt texture to overlay on this.

You can either google search or simply search the marketplace for a full perm one.

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Now open your tshirt overlay texture into photoshop. Then using the Rectangular Marquee Tool

..drag it over the image to highlight it. Then at the top of your screen under Edit, click on Copy


Now go back to your mesh texture tab.

Then go back to the top of the screen to Edit, then click Paste.

It should look like this.

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Now you need to play with Opacity of the layer.Right click on the layer. Then Click Blending Options. Then in the section where it says Blend Mode, choose from the drop down list Multiply.

Now your texture overlay should look like this.

woohooo its magic! your shirt has texture to it without you having to  do much of anything lol.

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The next step is adding shading and highlights. You dont want your shirt looking flat. To understand where to add these look at some images of people wearing tight fitting shirts.

Create a new layer ( top of your screen)
Now select a small round brush and your paint color to black and paint the shading in the proper areas. Example below.

 Now you are going to smooth this out by using Gaussian Blur. This is located under Filter, then Blur.
adjust this slowly so it doesnt over blur. It should now look like this.

Highlights.
Create a new layer. now change your paint color to white. Now add highlighting to parts of the body that will poke out the most in a shirt.

Same as above. Use Gaussian Blur to smooth it out.

Change the Blend Mode option to this one to Overlay so its not so harsh.


Wrinkles
 (Optional)
New layer, set brush to small size( 5-10)
Now go to Pen Tool ( its below smudge)

Now you need to choose an area to add wrinkles and click by click it will place connected dots.

 

Now right click over the connected dots , then choose Stroke Path.

Be sure simulate pressure box is checked.

Now click ok.Now you should see a smallish black line.Right click on the line and click Delete Path. Now repeat a few more in various sizes then adjust the opacity.

Now double click the layers over in the tab so you can name them Highlights and Shading ( and wrinkles if you added any)

Do not merge these layer. Click on the small button by the layers that looks like an eye. this will hide the layers until you need them later.

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Now to add cool designs and patterns.

If you are adding a pattern to the entire shirt you can repeat the process above for adding the simple overlay texture.




When you paste your full shirt pattern onto the Mesh Texture you may need to resize it. to do this click the Move Tool

 then at the top of the screen be sure this box is checked.

Now you will see that you can shrink the design overlay you just added.Just drag the corners.

Now duplicate the layer ( right click on the layer over in the panel, then click duplicate)
and drag it over to another uncovered area of the shirt.

Example

 This pattern overlay is set on Multiply under the blend mode option. you may try others for a different effect.You may also want to adjust brightness and contrast as well as Color Balance to create different color options.

Now unhide hose highlights and shading layers.

see the difference?


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Middle of the shirt design Option.

Open up your design. and Using the Pollygonal Lasso Tool trace around the area of the design you want to use.

 

Now go back to the mesh shirt tab, then go to Edit, then Paste.

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Now it really depends on what the design is and which Blend Mode option will look best with it. Just play around with them until you find one.

now smooth the edges out around design using the Smudge Tool (

I decided to just slowly smudge out the surrounding color into the entire shirt. Dont knock it lol it works for me :P

Just set the smudge brush to a smaller size and lower strength until you get farther out and raise it much higher and make the brush larger and within a  minute you will have it done. Yeah really fast.

Example

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Now Unhide the highlighting and shading layers ( be sure they are on top of the design. Then merge everything.

Done.

Play with brightness and contrast and Color Balance ext to achieve different color effects.

Shape Guide For Azz & Boobs

Its completely understandable feeling a little confused trying to get your shape proportioned properly when wearing mesh bodyparts. Just work with it a little and try to think of how proportions are suppose to look. You may even do a google image search to find images go use as a guide.However if your avatar is not completely human you may desire a more exaggerated appearance and thats fine if thats what you had planned.



Phat Azz

This is intended for women who prefer a much curvier appearance and with that in mind you need the rest of your body to look proportioned to this added on mesh bodypart. For example you dont want your arms to be too skinny or your shoulders too narrow.


Example of out of proportion version. ( ignore my hands lol)

Example of proportioned version

 You dont have to be short and squat or a super tall amazon. you can be either though. Just remember proportions and dont max out your sliders.


Cute Azz

For the women who prefer a more petite avatar. This can work for a woman who prefers a more athletic body, a petite model body. With this azz obviously you want to keep your sliders on the lower side.

Petite Model Version

 

Curvier Version

Biggest Proportion Mistakes

Muscular arms and broad shoulders. This is wear your proportions start to go wrong. You start looking a bit manish.

T-Rex arms. This happens when you dont even realize that when you make your av taller and legs longer you also need to make your arms longer. The tips of your fingers should reach close to mid thigh.

TRex Example

 

Correct Example

 

Waist Proportion

This can get tricky when you are wearing mesh lower halves. The thing to avoid is what is called wasp waist.

Example

 You want your waist in proportion to the rest of your body shape, never more that what appears to be a  few inches smaller, or it looks batshit insane.

Proper waist proportion Example

 

Breast Size

Unless your intentions are to create some sort of non human fetish doll avatar then stick to realism.You can have larger breasts but there comes a point when it looks stupid.

Example of too large

 

Proper proportion example1 ( note these are large but realistically large)

Example 2

I will be working on a shape guide for men soon too so keep watch.

Photo Editing Tutorial

I have several friends getting into photography and photo editing and just getting into using photoshop as well. So because of that i thought it much easier to make a step by step tutorial for editing a picture. Im gonna make this simple as possible.

This tutorial does not deal with drawing hair and any super difficult details. 


THE SNAPSHOT

You want your in world snapshot to be taken against a solid background. For this tutorial im just gonna suggest using either black or white because we wont be going into cutting out the avatar and pasting it onto any sort of scene for this.

So hop on your pose stand and set graphics as high as you can ( no shadows for this). Keep draw distance at a minimum to reduce lag. Also lower the slider for trees, sky, particles, and physics. None of those are needed for this.

Hit the snapshot button but do not save just yet. You will need to change the dimensions of your snapshot in order get a high resolution and high quality image to work with. So set it to 6000 X 3154 and save as png not jpg ( jpg will leave jagged edges).

                                                       (example snapshot)

BRUSHES
There are some basic brushes you should have for editing purposes that will always come in handy. You can find them on many different websites,but deviant art is probably your easiest way to go for locating them.

* Hair brushes
* skin brushes
* texture brushes

To install brushes  to:
My computer-Program Files, Adobe cs6-Presets-Brushes



EDITING

The editing program i use is Photoshop cs6. You can use others but i dont have a tutorial for those.

Steps

* File-Open ( now locate the image you want to edit)

* Crop (crop button image below) You hit this button then on the image just drag the sides and the top and bottom to where you want it, then at the top of your screen where it says Image choose the option where it says Crop ( all others will be greyed out)

* Create a new layer. To do this at the top of your screen go to Layer, then New, then click layer . This ads a new transparent layer over your image.

* adding texture and design. You want to do this work to the background before you start on the avatar itself because if you plan to add hair strands and such you dont want the background pattern to be covering it. Now select a brush

                                                     Now at the top of your screen under the words File and Edit you will see this . This is where you select the style of brush you want to use. All of your custom installed brushes will be here too.

*For this tutorial im just gonna select some simple grunge brushes to use. Adjust the size if needed
Now just stamp the brushes where you want the pattern

* after that you may need to adjust the layer opacity.Click on the layer you just added the design to, then where it says Opacity and has that little box with 100%,, click that to adjust .Now merge down by Right clicking your layer then click Merge Down.

SIMPLE ADJUSTMENTS

Before getting into other ad on adjustments you should do some simple brightness and contrast adjusting.Go to the top of your screen where it says Image, then Adjustments, then Brightness/Contrast. 

Now, dont over do it or it can look over saturated or washed out.

The image below is an example of your improved Brightness/Contrast

SKIN

Want to make some improvements to the skin? Its fairly simple. Create a new layer. Select a simple round brush. Resize it so its fairly small but large enough to paint areas of the face ext.

Now is a good time to zoom into the image to be able to get details. Go to the top on your screen where it says View. Click that then click zoom in.


Now use the eyedropper tool to select the darkest shaded area of your skin.( just click this tool then click on a dark shaded area)

 

Now  right click on your new layer and click Blending Options

This box will come up.

 

Now click the area towards the top where it says Blend Mode. From that drop down menu

click Multiply. Now click ok to close the box.

Multiply is a good way to add shading to the skin, you can adjust the layer opacity after you draw the shading on to make it more subtle.

Here are some samples of areas where you can draw extra shading.

It will not look this way when we are finished. The line doesnt have to be perfect so dont worry.

Now to blend and smooth this go to the top of your screen where it says Filter, click that, then click Blur, then Gaussian Blur. You want to adjust the Gaussian blur slowly to be sure you dont over blur.

At around 20 It should look something similar to this.

If you choose you can make your brush tons smaller and go over areas like around the mouth and nostrils to add more shading.

HIGHLIGHTS

To add skin highlighting is fairly simple and can make all the difference.

Create a new layer. Set the Blend Mode option to Soft Light.

Now with a simple round brush set to fairly small in size draw over areas of the skin where highlighting would naturally occur.

Now use the Gaussian blur on this layer as well. You may go over certain areas multiple times to layer the highlighting more.

 Sample image after layering and Gaussian blur.

EXTRA HIGHLIGHTS

Those pretty little extra highlights added to areas such as the chin, the boobs, outer areas of the body, and hair.

First you want to be sure your brush size is fairly tiny ( 8-12)

Select your color option to white.

Also you want to click this button here between the Opacity and Flow areas. ( the circle) and the one on the other side of Flow ( similar button).

Now select  Pen Tool

Create a new layer.

Now start clicking around your chin in the area the highlighting will be located

 

Now with Pen tool still selected right click on the area you just selected with the pen.Click Stroke Path. A little box will appear. Be sure to check the simulate pressure option on this.

Now click on OK

It will look something like this.

To smooth the line a bit, use the Smudge Tool. 

 

Now you dont want the smudge strength set too high so  at the top of your screen where it says Strength, adjust it to 15-20.

Adjust the size of the smudge brush to around 120 ( dime size)

Now smooth any edges of the highlighting.

After you finish with that you will need to adjust the Blend Mode of the layer. Try Hard Light. If more subtle light is desired then lower the layer opacity a little.

End result:

Now you may add these highlights to other areas, such as the nose, the outer areas of the lips, boobs, arms and legs.

End result Example

End result after added highlights to the hair and body ( same way as above)

 

SPECIAL EFFECTS AND STUFF

for a little extra something to your photo. Try adding special effects, like bokeh or lights.

You can find bokeh brushes on deviant art.

Create a new layer. Select your Bokeh brush.Adjust the size so the dots are not too huge. Now paint them in random areas around your avatar.

You may leave it as is, or play with the layer opacity. I readjusted my own  much lower.

Lighting Effects

You can use brushes for this, or use the photoshop filters.

Go to the top of your screen to Filter, Render, Lighting Effects. Now play around with the settings to get the lighting you like.

End result